Monthly Archives: October 2007

I am sorry to have waited this long to post. I assure you it was not voluntary and it motivates me to post often this week and for the remainder of the year. So that is a promise I make and you can call me on it.

This delayed post is about Knit Paint socks, a labor intensive dye process by Fly Designs of Washington. The process can be summarized like this:

First the yarn is knitted in its natural format (undyed), into socks on an antique sock machine. Once the socks are knitted each pair is hand-dyed with a sponge brush while using the sock like a canvas. Each set can take up to 2 hours to dye. The socks are then left to dry.

Once dry they are soaked and washed to set the dye and dried one more time. The socks are then ripped (yes, they frog the whole thing), and reskeined. When knitted Knit Paint skeins create lovely color patterns.

Here is a link to Barb’s blog, a customer of ours who has knitted a pair of socks with Knit Paint. Barb I snagged one of your photos I hope you don’t mind.

To get the subject line you have to know the song – Google search should get you a link to a YouTube video of Silver Convention performing the song – and read the rest of this post.

New yarns from Fly Designs are in and they happen to be yarnilicious. First one is Boo Fly Socks, one of the softest sock yarns with which I have ever had the pleasure of knitting. Boo Fly is made of 60% superwash merino, 30% bamboo, and 10% nylon for stability. This fiber combination makes for a super soft and lofty yarn – Boo Fly has bounce and shows patterns very well.

We will soon have near-solids for this yarn line just in case you were interested in complex/detailed patterns for your sock. Boo Fly comes in 4 ounce hanks with 435 yards each, which is enough for a pair of socks. This yarn also works great for lace projects so we will be getting in 8 ounce skeins of the same fiber with twice the yardage for lace knitters.

PS. A fun fact, I shipped 8 skeins of Boo Fly to Reykjavik, Iceland this week. Do you think Bjork will be sitting down to make Boo socks? Bjork, if you are out there knitting with Boo Fly Socks drop me a line and let me know what you think please.

The second new yarn from Fly Designs is a light-DK weight Blue Faced Leicester, Flying Sheep. As it can be expected from its 100% BFL content, this yarn is soft and has a lovely hand. Each 8 ounce hank has 660 yards of yarn, which is enough for a nice size stole, or a hat, mitt and scarf set, or a cropped bolero. Two hanks would make a generously sized shawl or a nice top. Did I say this yarn is delicious, yes it is! More colors coming soon.

Off topic discussion of a new TV show is to follow, here it goes. Did you guys watch Pushing Daisies tonight? If you did you would have seen that the private investigator, Emerson Cod, loves to knit. Tonight he knitted a vest, two gun holsters and a number of coin purses (only in his case they held big bills rather than coins).

In one scene he had really cool extending needles. Do these really exist? I doubt that they could. They were constructed like one of those pointer-wands you would use at a presentation that you could extend out to make it longer and collapse into itself. I would think that such needles would not work as the transition points for the folding parts would not be smooth enough…I digress. It was cool to see knitting main stream and being performed by a guy.

Nice header right? I kept thinking why right ‘Another New Sock Line?’ Say what you mean, so I did.

Fortissima Country Colors does the self-patterning thing just right, with beautiful colors and patterns that are not too random or too symmetrical.

When I look at these colors #16 calls me the first, it says ‘knit me and then wear me ASAP’ and I am usually a red girl. I am already knitting my older son a pair of socks with color #10, which he calls ‘tiger.’

Country Colors comes in 100 gram skeins so one skein is enough for a pair of socks. It is machine washable and has a soft hand. I think Opal’s Rainforest has some serious competition.

While I am here I might as well make a quick note to let you know that Austermann STEP came out with new colors and a set of Jacquard patterns, which it did not have before.

I am sure you all know about STEP, it has jojoba and aloe worked into the fiber and makes lofty and lovely socks.

I am going back to my forever-lace project, this is the 5th time I have knitted the same pattern from Knit One, Crochet Too.

I also have to figure out what to knit with approx. 600-675 yards of light DK weight yarn that was hand painted lovingly by Pat of Fly designs. Here is a photo. It is so pretty that I could not put our name across the skein. Any ideas?